The Tree Of Forty Fruits
A New York sculptor (and part time horticulturist) has achieved something truly incredible. Through a process of grafting he has managed to create a tree that produces 40 varieties of stone fruit at once.
Sam Van Aken grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. Grafting was a common practice and it was something that always intrigued him. “When I’d seen it done as a child it was Dr. Seuss and Frankenstein and just about everything fantastic,” he said during a Tedx talk last year.
Inspired by the farming techniques of his childhood, Van Aken decided to take things further in combination with his art. The trees are quite literally his sculptures.
The technique he uses is called ‘chip grafting’. By taking a slice of a fruit tree that includes buds, he can insert it into a matching incision in a host tree that is at least three years old.
A bit of good old gaffer tape and soon enough, the “veins” of the two trees flow into each other.
By repeating the process he has reached an amazing, 40 different fruits being grown from the same tree.
It wasn’t all plain sailing however. It has taken him much experimentation to perfect the process. “When I first started, I sort of grafted the branches on,” he said. “So each variety blossoms at a slightly different time. I had a tree that blossomed all on one side, but looked dead on the other.”
By mid 2015, Van Aken had created 21 ‘Trees of 40 Fruit’ all over America.
The Trees of 40 Fruit are a way for me to collapse an entire orchard into one tree to preserve varieties and diversity.” Van Aken explained.
“Part of the idea was to plant them in locations that people would sort of stumble upon. Once they happen upon these trees, they’d start to question why are the leaves shaped differently, why are they different colors. And then in summer, when you would see all of these different fruit growing on them, it is an artwork,” he said.
